Rightfully So

Black Tie Optional - New York Times:

Giggling, they hurried into a basement storage room, where some 40 people stood around, under stone arches and gargoyles, wearing nothing but shoes.

Naked parties? At college? I’m shocked! I wonder if it’s anything like sexy parties.

As you may (or may not) know, I am an adjunct faculty at the local post-secondary education institution. (Translated from the academic-speak, this means I am a part-time instructor at a community college.) While many of you out in non-academia may think that summer is just getting started, here in our ivory towers, we’re already thinking to the future.

For the fall semester, there are several new classes that have been added to the curriculum in order to keep current with the changing technology and business marketplace. Here is a summary.

MTH 404 - Internet Math
In cosmology and thermodynamics, physicists say with a straight face that “2 plus 2 equals five, for large values of 2.” In this class learn how to apply this useful nebulosity to modern internet quantities like “mindshare,” “traction” and “eyeballs.” A final project requires that students use internet math to prove how 2 plus 2 can, in certain circumstances, equal 5,000,000.

CIT 500 - Enterprise Application Development
Students learn how to leverage Microsoft’s .NET environment and thousands of developer-hours to assemble millions of lines of code into a scalable, robust application that would otherwise take a knowledgeable computer whiz a few weeks to crank out in Python.

CIT 503 - Enterprise Application Development II
Same as CIT 500, but using Java.

MKT 302 -Dimensionless Marketing
Use pro forma presence indicators to adaptively enhance corporate resources in order to dramatically administrate performance based intellectual capital and organic knowledge resources management. A multi-tined approach to dynamic matrices and vertical vector alignment enhances the pedagogy.

FIN 402 - Finance for Internet Startups
A fresh mixture of modern finance methods yield a new quantitative statistical metric that can create fast results for a rising internet business. Learn how dividing by zero can generate infinite revenue growth, infinite cash flow, and infinite customer growth.

LOB 101 - Introduction to Lobbying
Why use technology advances or process improvements to further a business enterprise when, for half the cost, your elected legislators would be happy to enact laws that stifle your competition?

ENG 011 - Words for Internet Trolls
Learn the correct spelling and usage of words when astroturfing on internet forums. Another words your a looser if you except instruction at a diffrent school why should the class be exasturbated if u cant even sea that

For decades, our nation has been wringing its collective hands over pre-marital sex, teen sex, and children born out of wedlock in an effort to eliminate the senseless socio-economic upheaval and tragic loss of human potential.

Efforts to combat this problem include health and disease awareness, counseling, and free condoms.

Of course, these actions only treat the symptoms of the sex problem, so a lot of effort also goes into early education. If a generation of kids learns the perils of sex at an early age, so the thinking goes, they’ll grow up into non-promiscuous adults.

It is this education route that I think holds the most promise for success, but I don’t think awareness programs go far enough. It is insufficient, in my opinion, for kids to merely have a healthy fear of casual intercourse; we need to cultivate a sense of loathing.

The modern American education system has plenty of experience in generating loathing in students and I suggest that we leverage this ability for a constructive war on sex. Think of your school-child years, and think of all of the things you learned to loathe: the cliques, the spirit assemblies, athletics, homework, tests.

Ah yes… homework and tests. How better to cause a pupil to hate something than by requiring homework and threatening with a test?

Among me and my friends, the most dreaded homework assignment was the book report. Before I could even start on the report, I would have to plow my way through some inscrutible, symbolism-infested, several-hundred-year-old tome, which I had absolutely no hope of understanding. Frequently, I would rely on my friend Cliff to get the job done.

And, even when I did manage to get the gist of a particular opus, it had no specific relevance for my adolescent self. What young person can wrap his or her mind around adultery as in The Scarlet Letter, or the irony of Eustacia Clementine as in The Return of the Native, or whatever the hell Thanatopsis is about as in Thanatopsis?

The end result of enduring these seemingly-endless years of senseless reading, reading and more reading, is, that as an adult, I fucking hate to read!!!!!!

So, let’s channel this hate for the good of a new generation. I propose that future school curricula include years and years of sex reports. Each semester, students would be required to fool around in a variety of ways, and then write reports about the experiences.

Imagine the conversation that would ensue in the school corridors:

Tyler: Dude, I was up all night playing World of Warcraft, and never got around to whacking off for tomorrow’s test.

Dakota: Man, I gotta do a circle jerk? We just did a whole section on group sex last month, and homos the month before. Now we’re doin’ ‘em both?

Kayla: Ohmigod, like, me and Caitlin were at the mall, and, we’re all, like, looking for Zack and whatever, and, then, like, Kyle and Gabe met us at Sunglass Hut, and, we’re all like, ‘Don’t go there,’ and we’ve got the soccer game on Friday, and the big sixty-nine test, and Nate and Abbey were watching Survivor instead having butt-sex in her bedroom like they were supposed to, and, ohmigod, Mr. Crandall gave us a pop quiz on dildoes, and I’m, like, all bummed out or whatever, ’cause I, like, totally didn’t study, and then Mackenzie and Cameron…

For decades, our nation has waged its so-called “War On Drugs” in an effort to eliminate the senseless socio-economic upheaval and tragic loss of human potential.

Efforts to combat this problem include rehabilitation, incarceration, interdiction and causing Roundup™ to rain down on the entire nation of Colombia.

Of course, these actions only treat the symptoms of the drug problem, so a lot of effort also goes into early education. If a generation of kids learns the perils of drugs at an early age, so the thinking goes, they’ll grow up into non-drug-using adults.

It is this education route that I think holds the most promise for success, but I don’t think programs like D.A.R.E. go far enough. It is insufficient, in my opinion, for kids to merely have a healthy fear of drugs; we need to cultivate a sense of loathing.

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Imagine a person who is 100% consistent. Imagine someone who will try to get you to stop whining the instant you begin. Imagine that you admire the consistency that this person can keep up in order to properly condition the subject who is whining. Now imagine this person is a dog. Evidently, mans best friend doesn’t care to hear us complain much.

I found this out quite by accident, but my dogs resolve continues to surprise me. My dog is very kind to me. Whenever she needs to eat, drink, play, or use the doggy potty room - she alerts me by coming over and looking pitiful. If I do not respond in a reasable amount of time (3.2 milliseconds), she begins a painful whine. After I realized that my dog was training me much better than I had ever trained her, I began to resist. Instead of responding to the very reasonable needs my dog was informing me of, I decided to engage in a very mature game of copycat. It turns out that she hates this.

If I mimic her whine back to her, she will whine louder. If I continue to whine she will begin pacing back and forth. As I continue to whine she will begin to bark. Finally, as my unrelenting whine hits a terrible crescendo, she storms out of the room. Once again I have a tiny epiphany and realize that my dog is acting more reasonable than I do. When my kids whine I tell them that whining will not get them what they want. They continue to whine and I inform them that whining is a sure fire way to lose privileges. As their whining intensifies to near tantrum stage I tell them to go to a room where all of the toys are. If I had just followed the lead of my dog, I would have laid down in my bed and taken a nap.

I want to be a dog, and rightfully so.

I went to my first college football game in 15 years this fall. Before I went, I was chastised when I asked how much a beer is at the game. Apparently, they don’t serve beer at college football games! I was stunned. If college taught me anything it was that alcohol is an important part of the learning process.

We hear about the party schools, but I never knew Yale and Harvard were such places. Apparently, during their annual face-off, in the past there would be as many people inside the stadium as there were in the parking lot. Now, administrators are cracking down on this behavior.
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